OMG!Or should that be OMFSM?Anyway, I just came a crossed this show on YouTube ""The Hidden Faith of our Founding Fathers" (Kegslinger) and it is groundbreaking!

Let me explain:For just about EVER here in the U.S. the Christians have tried to say that ours is a Christian country built on Christian principals by Christians.

I had looked into this subject years ago and found it to be not true and yet the Christians maintain that it is. So...

Imagine my jaw dropping surprise when I come a crossed this movie presented from a Christian perspective which delves into the true history of the founding fathers of the United States and finds them to be infidels and even eludes in one case to them being satanic!

Holy crap! It's a complete and total 180 degree spin on what they have been preaching since the beginning of mud! They are damning the founding fathers in great detail about how they were NOT believers in the Christian god!

I don't think it's much of a secret that many of the Founding Fathers weren't necessarily devout Christians.

Many are believed to have been deists (i.e. they thought the universe had a creator, but that he doesn't get involved in the lives of people, and who doesn't directly communicate with us, either by revelation or by sacred books).

George Washington often used Deistic terms such as "Great Author", "Almighty Being", "invisible hand", "benign parent of the human race", and "supreme architect" to describe his god, but virtually never referred to just "God" (only in terms such as "natural god"). This is very much a Deistic convention - Deists prefer not to use the unqualified term "God" in their conversation and writings because of its Christian connotations. It has also been noted that in all of his letters and correspondence throught the Revolution, whilst he accepted the hand of Providence in some things, he never once mentions Jesus. Washington didn't seem to accept communion and would usually leave any services before it was offered

John Adams - wrote about a discussion he had with a chap called Major Greene. Greene argued that "some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand". In response Adams wrote in his diary "Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity". He also signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"

Thomas Jefferson's skepticism of traditional Christianity is well known. He didn't believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. Jefferson however admired Jesus as a moral teacher. He went so far as to edit the New Testament, removing all the stories of miracles and divinity, leaving only the human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found "sublime".Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, because he thought that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job, and asserted that the First Amendment erects a "wall of separation between church and state. Jefferson once famously observed to Adams "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter". In another letter to John Adams, he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise".

James Madison's religious views are still a subject of debate, about whether he was Christian or Deist. However he was probably the most hard core of the Founding Fathers about the separation of church and state, for example opposing government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military, government-issued prayer proclamations, and vetoing legislation that granted federal land to a church, and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter (in both cases, he cited the First Amendment).

Thomas Paine - okay, so he never held elective office, but his pamphlets played a vital role in rallying Americans to independence. In 1776, Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet "The American Crisis" be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booste. "Common Sense" was similarly popular with the people. Paine also was a radical Deist - his work "The Age of Reason" attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity, rejecting prophecies and miracle. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament "wicked" and the entire Bible "the pretended word of God". Paine called on his readers to embrace reason rather than religion.

I think the reason that the Founding Fathers are being dubbed infidels, satanists etc, is precisely because they weren't all orthodox Christians (although to be fair, some were. Amongst the Founding Fathers were also Calvinists which is one of the most rigid and conservative of the Christian doctrines). The delegates to the constitutional convention drafted the constitution as an explicitly secular document. God was nowhere mentioned in it. Indeed the document that was finally approved at the constitutional convention mentioned religion only once, and that was in Article VI, Section 3, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States". This explicit secularism remains a thorn in the side of the Religion Right, who seem to want to rewrite US history to claim that it's a Christian nation - hence, I suspect, the attempted demonisation of the authors of that secular document.

I don't think it's much of a secret that many of the Founding Fathers weren't necessarily devout Christians.

Many are believed to have been deists (i.e. they thought the universe had a creator, but that he doesn't get involved in the lives of people, and who doesn't directly communicate with us, either by revelation or by sacred books).

George Washington often used Deistic terms such as "Great Author", "Almighty Being", "invisible hand", "benign parent of the human race", and "supreme architect" to describe his god, but virtually never referred to just "God" (only in terms such as "natural god"). This is very much a Deistic convention - Deists prefer not to use the unqualified term "God" in their conversation and writings because of its Christian connotations. It has also been noted that in all of his letters and correspondence throught the Revolution, whilst he accepted the hand of Providence in some things, he never once mentions Jesus. Washington didn't seem to accept communion and would usually leave any services before it was offered

John Adams - wrote about a discussion he had with a chap called Major Greene. Greene argued that "some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand". In response Adams wrote in his diary "Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity". He also signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"

Thomas Jefferson's skepticism of traditional Christianity is well known. He didn't believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. Jefferson however admired Jesus as a moral teacher. He went so far as to edit the New Testament, removing all the stories of miracles and divinity, leaving only the human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found "sublime".Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, because he thought that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job, and asserted that the First Amendment erects a "wall of separation between church and state. Jefferson once famously observed to Adams "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter". In another letter to John Adams, he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise".

James Madison's religious views are still a subject of debate, about whether he was Christian or Deist. However he was probably the most hard core of the Founding Fathers about the separation of church and state, for example opposing government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military, government-issued prayer proclamations, and vetoing legislation that granted federal land to a church, and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter (in both cases, he cited the First Amendment).

Thomas Paine - okay, so he never held elective office, but his pamphlets played a vital role in rallying Americans to independence. In 1776, Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet "The American Crisis" be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booste. "Common Sense" was similarly popular with the people. Paine also was a radical Deist - his work "The Age of Reason" attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity, rejecting prophecies and miracle. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament "wicked" and the entire Bible "the pretended word of God". Paine called on his readers to embrace reason rather than religion.

I think the reason that the Founding Fathers are being dubbed infidels, satanists etc, is precisely because they weren't all orthodox Christians (although to be fair, some were. Amongst the Founding Fathers were also Calvinists which is one of the most rigid and conservative of the Christian doctrines). The delegates to the constitutional convention drafted the constitution as an explicitly secular document. God was nowhere mentioned in it. Indeed the document that was finally approved at the constitutional convention mentioned religion only once, and that was in Article VI, Section 3, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States". This explicit secularism remains a thorn in the side of the Religion Right, who seem to want to rewrite US history to claim that it's a Christian nation - hence, I suspect, the attempted demonisation of the authors of that secular document.

Yes indeed Cardinal,I commend you for such a well written and knowledgeable post.Have you watched the show? If not, I think you would very much enjoy it.

I find that one of the most interesting, fascinating and inspiring things about life is the questioning of commonly held beliefs. When I was young I thought that all the "grown-ups" knew pretty much everything and only differed on the details. As I matured I realized just how vastly different their beliefs were and how thin their reasoning was to support that which they believed.

They believe things because they believe things.

Any way,I would love to get into a tangle with someone wishing to dispute the show... someone that wanted to portray the Founding Fathers of the US as being Christians building a Christian country.

The sad part though is that, in the end regardless of the facts we would more than likely need to all agree to disagree...

(Rigger Tony takes a swig of grog... He stands and knocks aside a passed out shipmate so as to make his way atop a crate of whiskey...)

"Mates... whether you think it makes a difference or not... state your damn case like a man, but for the love of FSM, question your own beliefs and see if they be sound... and be willing to change..."